Company:

In 1925 MacLean-Fogg offered
one lock nut to North America’s
railroads, and business took off.
Today MacLean-Fogg Company is
a leading manufacturer of products
for the automotive and power
utility industries. Headquartered
in Mundelein, Illinois, the familyowned
business has grown into a
global enterprise employing more
than 3,500 people throughout
North America, Europe and Asia.

Challenge:

MacLean-Fogg manufactures
products nonstop and strives to
deliver them on time every time.
That level of business requires a
highly responsive IT infrastructure
that keeps core Microsoft, ERP
and specialized manufacturing
systems available 24x7. MacLean-
Fogg faced two challenges
associated with 24x7 Availability:
inconsistent backup and long,
drawn-out recovery. A short time
later the company faced another
challenge: a hardware refresh.

Results:

Reduces the company’s
risk of data loss

Saves the business $5,000 and
nearly 600 hours each year

Enables fast resolution of
backup issues before they
impact operations

The Business Challenge

The world of global manufacturing is extremely competitive. MacLean-Fogg
Company differentiates itself from peers by combining top-rated customer service
with advanced engineering and precise manufacturing. That’s why the company’s
wheel nuts are in every car Ford manufactures.

MacLean-Fogg’s success depends on a number of business factors, including
IT availability, agility and scalability. When the company sought to maximize
IT efficiencies, improving availability of critical systems was at the top of the list.

The biggest roadblocks to 24x7 Availability were inconsistent backup and long,
drawn-out recovery. Backup failed three out of five times, and recovery was arduous,
particularly for application items like email. Another tedious process was getting
technical help from the vendor.

“Calling technical support was like falling into a black hole,” Ciscon said. “We dreaded
those calls because the technical support people had limited knowledge of their
products and often read responses from a script. Getting elevated to the next tier
of their support organization was a very slow, difficult process.”

Agents were another challenge. They had to be installed and maintained in every
virtual machine (VM), and they required considerable CPU and memory.

“When we backed up Microsoft Exchange and ERP, two of our largest and most critical
systems, VMs running each system took hits,” he said. “It wasn’t worth risking our
production environment for agents. Instead, we needed a solution that was actually
designed for virtualization and would help us advance the business.”

“Any MacLean-Fogg location that has a VMware host has Veeam—it’s that good,”
Ciscon said. “We’re all drinking the Veeam Kool-Aid.”

Shortly after deploying Veeam, MacLean-Fogg was due for a hardware refresh.
The company replaced its data center platform with FlexPod, which includes Cisco
Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) servers and NetApp unified storage.

“Combining Veeam and FlexPod was a big win for us,” Ciscon explained. “Together
they keep core Microsoft, ERP and specialized manufacturing applications available
24x7 so we can move the business forward. Plus, we reduce our risk of data loss with
every restore point we add.”

Veeam and FlexPod helped MacLean-Fogg increase the number of restore points
in two ways. Backup windows decreased, enabling the company to back up more
frequently. Veeam and NetApp deduplication conserve backup storage, making
room for additional restore points. Plus, Veeam backup doesn’t impact the company’s
production environment, so VMs running Exchange and ERP aren’t compromised.

“Performance with Veeam with FlexPod is stellar,” Ciscon said. “Making backups and
replicas from NetApp FAS snapshots is fast, easy and reliable, saving us up to 10 hours
each week in troubleshooting time—the equivalent to more than 500 hours each year.”

MacLean-Fogg saves time during DR tests as well. Veeam SureBackup® and
SureReplica verify the recoverability of backups and replicas, giving the company
full confidence that Veeam has DR covered.

Ciscon said another Veeam benefit is the number of restore features, such as such
as Instant VM Recovery®.

“You can restore in any kind of DR scenario,” he sad. “When the VM running the file
server for our corporate office failed during a Windows installation, we instantly
recovered from the previous night’s backup. Users had access to their files in minutes.
Before Veeam, recovering that VM would have taken hours and inconvenienced users.”

Another helpful recovery feature is Veeam Explorer™ for Microsoft Exchange, which
lets IT browse Exchange backups and quickly restore emails back to users’ mailboxes.

“There’s something else we like about Veeam,” Ciscon said. “Technical support
doesn’t become a black hole. Our questions are answered quickly by people who
understand the software.”

MacLean-Fogg upgraded to Veeam Availability Suite™ a few years after deploying
Veeam Backup & Replication. The reason for upgrading was threefold: advanced
monitoring, reporting and capacity planning.

“Limited monitoring was the catalyst for our upgrade,” Ciscon explained. “We wanted
visibility into backups, enabling us to determine ‘what went wrong’ if a backup issue arose.
Veeam monitoring alerts us to issues, and we fix them before they impact the business.”

The Results

Reduces the company’s risk of data loss
Veeam and FlexPod reduce MacLean-Fogg’s risk of data loss by helping the
company increase the number of backup restore points. More frequent backup,
thanks to shorter backup windows, and conserved storage, thanks
to deduplication, allow for additional restore points.

Saves the business $5,000 and 560 hours each year
Veeam is agentless for all virtual workloads, saving the business $5,000 in yearly
license renewal fees. Veeam is also fast and reliable, saving 500 hours’ worth
of backup and restore troubleshooting and 60 hours of DR testing each year.

Enables fast resolution of backup issues before they impact operations
Monitoring, reporting and capacity planning with Veeam give MacLean-Fogg
complete visibility of the backup environment so issues can be identified and resolved
before they escalate into problems that might negatively impact business operations.